Let’s start with Bourbon Butter Pecan at Area 51, a memorable riff on a Southern favorite. The cream itself is a mixture of heavy cream, eggs, and butter, but contains only seven grams of fat. The pecans are toasted and coated with brown sugar and Kosher salt. The ice cream gets its bourbon flavor from barrel-aged whiskey.
One of 12 signature flavors, the butter pecan’s locally sourced and seasonal ingredients exemplify what sets Area 51’s “farm-to-scoop” mission apart from other creameries. “Ice cream is like anything else,” says owner Karin Cubbage. “The quality that you put into it is what you get out of it.”
Made from scratch in small batches at Area 51’s original shop in nearby Hernando, Mississippi, which opened its doors May 2014, the ice cream is delivered daily to the Crosstown location. Here, Karin and her husband Steve operate their second store, tucked between French Truck Coffee and Farm Burger, selling cookies, sorbets, and floats along with a changing menu of ice cream flavors.
The couple’s love affair with ice cream is longstanding, stretching back to childhood, when each of their parents used to make homemade ice cream in the park.
“My passion for ice cream started from childhood, when a sweet scoop could make the rest of the world melt away,” Steve says.
Karen, who moved from baking to ice cream making, says her ice cream addiction is so obsessive that she often comes home from work and eats a pint of ice cream as dinner. “We both thought it would be more affordable to open an ice cream business to make the ice cream rather than support Karen’s ice cream habit,” says Steve.
Farm-to-scoop best describes how the ice cream is made. Area 51 uses natural, seasonal ingredients from the Hernando Farmer’s Market to ensure that their ice cream is fresh and their business benefits local farmers.
For example, the creamery only offers strawberry ice cream when strawberries are ripe and in season. The same concept applies for pumpkin and blueberry flavors.
Area 51’s chocolate-based menu items also use high-quality ingredients. For instance, chocolate ice cream, chocolate brownies, and chocolate chip cookies only include a high-quality chocolate called Callebaut, which has Belgium origins.
The couple churns the ice cream in small batches with a standard kitchen mixer with dasher blades. The mixer can be set at altered speed and spin times, just like the household washer and dryer combos, which affects how much air goes into the ingredients.
The mixer is a major player in the ice cream’s texture, and guests can definitely tell the difference from other ice cream.
“One of the things that people like about our ice cream is that it is thicker and has a different kind of mouth feel to it,” Karen says. “Part of that is because we spin ours at a slower rpm than most people do.”
(Editor's Note: A multi-story package on the restaurants at Crosstown Concourse appeared in the February issue of Memphis magazine. For the online edition, look for individual stories, including an interview Todd Richardson., and stories on Mama Gaia., Next Door Eatery's Kimbal Musk, French Truck Coffee and So Nuts and Confections.)
